


A Study of Muggle Terminology by H. Weasley

by Kahvi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Sexual Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the years, Hermione almost gets the chance to come to terms with her own sexuality and sexual orientation, but never more than that. Little chances slip away over the years, into nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study of Muggle Terminology by H. Weasley

She had never asked for a TV in her room, much in the way she never asked for anything, but her parents (much in the way they always did) felt that it was something a teenage girl should want to have, and so gave it to her. Hermione sometimes worried that they worried too much about these things. However, when all was said and done, she was almost embarrassed to admit how much she missed some parts of muggle life, and so did not tell them (or anyone) how, on school holidays, she would curl up with tea and ginger biscuits and a blanket, if the weather was right; lemonade or half an orange is it wasn't and watch simply _everything_. She would watch so-called funny home videos and stupid cartoons and music videos - some of which were quite good - and advertisments for things she had almost forgotten existed, and that was part of why she needed this.

She watched Countdown and Neighbours and Blue Peter, rolling her eyes at the children taking part; eons away from her thirteen year old self. She watched the news even though it didn't seem as important as what was going on in her _other_ life, but this, she knew was precisely why it _was_ important. She watched American sit-coms and talkshows and their silly English knock-offs, mentally ticking off which magical remedies she could use to fix whichever problem the characters or participants were struggling with. She finished her oranges and biscuits and tea, and sometimes yelled at the set for no particular reason other than frustration.

"For God's sake," she'd yell at a tattooed teen; "that doesn't come off, you know!" Very probably it did - she could think of half a dozen spells, for a start; there were probably more than enough potions that'd do the trick too - but as far as that sad little rebel was concerned, it most certainly did not.

She snorted loudly, setting her cup down if needs be, at paternity tests and cheating spouses, because it was easier to laugh than to admit she had no idea how something as complicated as a relationship would really work. Surely though, there were better ways to go about it! And then there were the people who claimed to be gay, but in love with someone of the opposite sex. At this particular subject, Hermione would sit back with a theatrical sigh and possibly roll her eyes again, if she felt like it.

"Oh, come _on_. If you like both men and women, there's a word for that; _bisexual!_ " She never meant to lower her voice when she said that, but she always did. It was really quite simple; gay, straight and bisexual. It seemed absurd, to Hermione Granger, age thirteen and a bit, that anyone could be so daft as to defy logic in this manner. She knew what she was; heterosexual. She didn't like girls, but if she suddenly found out that she did, she'd be bisexual, and she would have been wrong about being straight, which she wasn't, so there.

She thought these things, and others, flicking through the channels to find something less annoying. Then she turned off the set, and got out her Gilderoy Lockhart books to see the pictures move and enjoy the fact that she didn't know what he was like yet.

 

\-----

 

"May I ask you someting?" Hermione sits out one dance out of many (many!) with Viktor and his grazing stubble and uncertain hands, and finds herself next to Luna Lovegood, and this is as good a conversation topic as any, and anyway, she _has_ been wondering.

"You already did."

"I... suppose. All right; why aren't there any gay couples here?"

Luna looks at her with earnest, pale eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Some of the students have to be gay, of course; that's just statistics. I always assumed I didn't see them because I wasn't looking, but I notice straight couples all the time. And then I wondered if there was some sort of taboo, because that would be an awful shame." She smiles, hoping it's not too overbearing. If this is a cultural difference, it's important to try to be understanding.

"No, I mean, I don't know what _gay_ is."

"You..." Hermione blinks. Pink and lavender and pale blue frills whisk by them , in a poufy blur.

"Hang on... that's a Muggle term, isn't it? For girl who like girls?"

"And boys who like boys," Hermione answers, stunned. "You don't have a word for that?"

"Not really."

"So what do you call..." She looks around the room, from face to face, trying to see what is or isn't there. "Girls who like girls?"

Luna considers this for a while. "People." She shrugs. "Why do Muggles _have_ a word for it?"

"Because it's important!" It is, isn't it? This is like asking why one would have a word for breathing, or eating, or sleeping! But Luna says nothing much in reply, watching the dancers and muching on a handful of nuts rather quitely, until Hermione has to break the silence. "So, why aren't there any at the ball?"

"Boys bring girls to the ball. Or girls bring boys. You know. It's like getting married."

"So girls don't marry girls?"

Luna laughs, which is always unexpected. "Goodness, no! Why would they? Marriage is for children. Why would you get married if you didn't want to have children?"

And that is the moment Hermione realizes she does not want children, but it is also the moment Viktor picks her up and twirls her, sweeping her into forgetful bliss. And everything is all right, for a time. 

 

\----

 

The girl's name is Arabella. She's is in Hermione's Ancient Runes class this year - just _this_ year, her schedule being... complicated, and she is absolutely beautiful. Hermione stares at her hair for precious minutes at a time, in what she knows must be envy. Brown, thick, wavy, wonderful hair _just_ this side of black, cut with deep red mahogany. It is not the way she usually thinks about hair, but hair is something Hermione _does_ think a lot about, so she shrugs it off.

But she cannot shrug off Arabella. She's _very_ clever, in a way that's almost uncomfortable, and her dark voice often quietly spells out answers to questions before the rest of the class has really noticed. Hermione is clever, she knows she is, but she doesn't draw attention from boys the way Arabella's perfect lashes and calm eyes do, and that should not matter, but it does. They are never paired together for translation work, and Hermione spends too much time wondering why. She chews at her quill (which she's told only muggleborns ever do) and tries to see if Arabella does too. She answers questions and stares and wonders and waits for something undefinable.

Hermione has her first dream about her over the Christmas holidays, but there is too much else going on and she quickly forgets. It's not important, anyway; it's just a girl with pretty hair and clear throughts and deep answers. 

 

\----

 

"Who's that, then?"

It took considerable effort to distract Mr. Weasley from the prospect of an actual muggle moving picture performance, but much to Hermione and Ron's relief, they passed the Oxford Street Dixons on their way to 'the cinematograph', as he kept calling it. With promises to 'not tell mum, under any circumstances', the elder Weasley was blissfully waiting for them there, not being, as Ron muttered conspiratorily when they left him, all that comfortable with the idea of chaperoning in the first place. Hermione blinked at the unexpected word but didn't know what to say in reply, and now, here they are in a place she should feel more familiar with than she does, looking at posters of a girls in a silver coat and army boots. "I don't know," she says, not really looking.

"She's _gorgeou..._ " he catches himself, clears his throat, and casts about desperately for something else to rest his eyes on.

It's all Hermione can do not to roll her eyes and laugh, but then she looks up at the poster and sees the girl's face. All the way up, with the bits on the way.

"I mean," Ron squirms, "she's all right looking. For a..."

He's clearly about to say 'muggle', but Hermione doesn't care. Her brain feels like something has happened to it. Like a jolt of electricity hit it. "For a what," she mumbles, just to buy time. She _needs_ to keep looking at this girl, this _woman_ , with sharp cheekbones and interesting eyes and short black hair like a helmet.

"Just forget it!" Ron takes her arm, pulling her towards the ticket queue, but Hermione has never wanted to see a modern adaptation of a Shakespeare play less, even if it does have Leonardo di Caprio in it. (He's a much better actor than people say; it's impossible to convince anyone you like him for his talent, and this annoys her even as she stares at the female face in front of her.)

"Angelina Jolie."

"What?"

"That's her name; it's on the poster."

"Oh, right." Ron has stopped pulling on her arm, and this jolts her back into reality, which is what this place has to be. It feels different than a moment ago.

"Ron?"

"Yeah?" He's fumbling in his pockets for the unfamiliar money his dad gave him; it won't be enough, Hermione knows; Arthur hasn't quite mastered the concept of muggle currency. She's brought enough to pay for the both of them, discreetly.

"Why do we need a chaperone?"

He shrugs, the same way he did when she asked about portkeys or quidditch or the chocolate frogs for the first time. "It's what you do, innit?"

"But we're sixteen." Old enough to have sex, she doesn't say, the knot below her belt tightening. Further. Ron frowns like he doesn't understand what she's saying, but then the woman at the ticket window points out that they don't take Francs.

 

\---

 

It's funny how it goes. Hermione does everything she can, she later realizes, to avoid _settling down_ , as Mrs. Weasly puts it, after the war. First, there is finishing her NEWTS; then finding a job and a flat (in muggle London; she doesn't want to be away from her parents any more than she needs to, not ever again) unspoken things in the air between her and Ron all the while. She asks him to move in only to see what will happen when he refuses, scandalized, but as she sits in the Burrow, glass of 'cheeky' - Molly's words - wine half-way to her mouth and sees the look on everybody's faces, the joke falls flat. Which is probably why she tells them it is one.

He does stay over, for brief and guilty sex, which her television tells her is not the way it is supposed to go between twenty-somethings in the world in which she no longer lives. Not fully. She can tell by everything he says and does; by every inch of body language that he does not understand why she is doing this, not realizing that she does not, herself, much know what 'this' is. She owls him when she's got the odd weekend off - which is rarely - and they do things and he's very loudly patient and forcedly understanding, and she doesn't understand why this does not make her happy.

It is New Year's Eve when he finally asks her, or doesn't, rather. Instead, he cries, which he hasn't done since the war, and rarely before then, and asks her why.

"Why what?"

"Why don't you want to marry me?"

She stands in baffled lack of reply for a good, long while, and he seems to take that as confirmation of whatever fears he's had. And then he explains them:

"I know you like girls, OK?"

"You... what?" She goes hot and cold at the same time; disorienting.

"I know it's different for muggles, but you're not one of them, you never were, not really! I don't see why you still want to be. You're a witch! Witches don't marry other witches; they stay single, or they marry wizards if they want to have children. You want to have children, don't you?" He looks at her, eyes wet and hopeless, and she nods without quite knowing why. She doesn't. She's known that for a while, now. She doesn't want children. "So why can't we get married? I know you like me!"

"I..." she says the only thing she knows to be true, as the clocks strike twelve. "I love you."

His face lights up, but that could be the fireworks. He smiles, and she sees her future, then; two kids and a family owl; a summer cottage in Hogsmeade. "I won't mind about any girls," not 'women', she notes, wondering why she notes this, in particular, "it's not like that. People do as they please, when they're married. It's like having friends, really."

_Arabella works at the Ministry; it was in The Prophet; you saw her picture,_ a new voice in her head tells her, but aloud she says "it's not like that. I'm not gay."

"I don't know what that means."

Hermione drinks her champagne. Little, thoughtful sips. "It doesn't matter," she says.  
In time, perhaps, she might even believe it.


End file.
